15 Sure-Shot Ways To Hit The Jackpot

By Priyanka Mashelkar

Life is just tough sometimes. And we survive— physically, emotionally, even socially. But financially? Nope. But what if someone told you that you need to complete just fifteen steps to have your financial life set up forever? Not just set up, but actually hit the financial jackpot, every single time, and that too without depending on the grace of Lady Luck? Well, guess what, it' s true! In fifteen quick and practical steps, I will teach you how to luck-proof your money, beat the credit card companies at their own game, pay off all your debts, catch the next big investment trend, and retire early, and all this while you continue to sweat it out at that high-end gym and delicately peck at your food in the newest molecular gastronomy café in town. After all, it' s only once you master your finances that you can win the jackpot of life. So, let' s get started with the mastering, shall we?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9789354401985

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Who knew that getting a job would be the biggest adventure sport of your life? The beeping of your mobile phone, the latest and the fanciest one of them all, on the first of every month (or whichever date it is when your salary gets credited!), notifying you yet again that your vanvaas, your exile, has ended. That you can now rejoin the ranks of normal human beings in heading to the nearest mall, catching up with the latest flick (albeit with your Uniqlo masks on), and eating at the newest molecular gastronomy café on the block (although, don’t you think the food in each and every one of these cafés just about tastes the same?). Or at least that’s what you hope to do once things have ‘normalised’; till then, shopping online for Calathea plants and hand-made Etsy picture frames will have to do. The high you achieve on receiving that SMS is a high that not even skydiving or uploading your skydiving pictures on social media and watching the likes tick upwards can achieve.

But in one small dark corner of your mind, you know that come the 15th of the month, or maybe the 20th, if you are careful, life will begin to look slightly duller. Maybe you will still go ahead and order take-out on Saturday, but it will be from the local fast-food joint instead of the fancy sushi place. And maybe that Michael Kors tote bag or that Breitling watch doesn’t look as appealing anymore, the reviews, after all, rate it at just a 3.5 anyway.

Come the 25th, the situation becomes downright desperate. Now is the time to hunker down and bring out the big guns. Mom’s cooking suddenly seems very desirable—it’s organic, authentic, and very ‘in’. The security guards of your society are also relaxed now. No packages containing that tiny imported bottle of French lavender essential oil for your nocturnal session of aromatherapy, or that bottle of seawater essence from Jeju to complete your ultimate skincare regimen, or that rugged biker jacket that costs an arm and a leg are to be collected and delivered safely to your apartment.

And then, just like that, it’s the 1st of the month and you are once again welcomed, with much fanfare, into the land of the plenty. The rollercoaster ride continues, but you don’t care. You are at the highest point of the ride and of your account balance.

Does this sound even remotely like the life you are leading? Have you ever, in the never-ending cycle of earning money and then watching it slip right out of your fingers, felt that it all added up to a big fat zero? #FML anyone?

But hold on. The good news is that you are in good company. As per a recent survey,¹ around 50% of Indians save close to nothing. Even more dishearteningly, 56% haven’t even started planning for their retirement corpus. How did we reach such a pass?

The answer lies in how we have shaped our attitude towards money. Money is a bigger taboo than even sex. At least we provide some semblance, however inadequate it might be, of sex education to our school-going children. But do you remember any teacher ever talking to you about mutual funds or retirement plans? Financial education, which is, in my very humble opinion, more vital than any other subject taught in our schools, is left to our parents. And maybe they tried the best they could to teach us about the value of money. But whatever it is that we knew of money as children, it has all changed, hasn’t it? It’s not just the beliefs and the values of our parents’ generation that have undergone a sea change. It is the whole world that has turned on its head! Saving money and depositing it into fixed deposits (FDs) and recurring deposits (RDs) is not going to cut it any longer, which is, truth be told, still more than what most of us manage to do. We no longer live in our parents’ world, and neither can we live life the way they did. But if not their way of existence, then which one are we to turn to? We do not know; hence, we do not bother. Right now is for spending on exactly what we want at that mercurial moment in time (and maybe a bit more than that), and living our best life. Retirement is ages away and we may not even survive until then, so might as well enjoy it while we have youth on our side.

But what if we do survive? What if we do manage to stay alive until the very end, when our teeth chatter at the slightest hint of a breeze and our knees creak with every movement? What then? No one knows what we will do, and we do not talk to each other about it. Like I said, taboo subject.

But with the pandemic bringing our glittering worlds to a grinding halt, we have been forced to confront many axiomatic truths of life that we took for granted. For example, some of us have learnt that not going on that annual international vacation is, in fact, not harmful to health. Whereas some others have realised that the salaries we depend on so heavily are not the most trustworthy of creatures. We are now in the unique situation where we want to save, but no one knows how to!

So, we are all in excellent company—you, your friends, your subordinates, your colleagues, and even your boss, we are all in the same stupid boat. Impossible! Your boss, with three times your salary, that super sexy luxury car, and that sea-facing house, in the same boat as you? You with your little house on rent and your monthly local train pass? Yes! Absolutely yes! Just calculate the monthly instalments your boss must be paying on that house and that car. Then factor in the amount going right out of their bank account as fees for the private school education of their kids, the salaries they must be paying to their domestic staff, and very soon, three times of your salary will seem to be not that much money after all. So, your boss is as stressed out about money as you are. Uh-oh. But that was your retirement plan, wasn’t it? Get a good promotion, a fat increment and a bonus, and then you would automatically have saved enough for your retirement nest egg. Nope, not happening. At the rate at which you are going, you would have to keep working till the day you die to save enough for a ‘retirement nest egg’, so to say. You are, in other words, literally walking on a treadmill—you are working very hard, sweating bullets, bleeding your heart and soul out, but you are still staying in the exact same place. But don’t worry, you will have your boss walking right beside you, along with an entire tribe of financially clueless people. Misery loves company as they say. That is the good news.

There is no bad news. There is only better news, hopeful news: that getting out of this chakravyuh, this endless maze you find yourself in, is not rocket science. In fact, it is common sense that will gently guide you out if you let it. Nothing I tell you in this book will be a revelation, but I guarantee you, it will get your life on track as long as you commit to completing the checklist that I will provide in the pages ahead. Yes, it is that simple! Just finish this to-do list, complete the milestones, and never worry about money again.

But before we begin, I must tell you what this book isn’t, for I believe in complete transparency. So, here goes: This book is not the only way, or even the best way to manage your finances. In my opinion, a good way to manage your finances is one that everyone can understand and implement with ease and one that does not take too much time from our already hectic lives. And it is better than that supposedly ‘perfect’ way to manage your money which requires deep financial research and dedicated hours of study each day and which no one can honestly make head or tail of. If that is what you are looking for, I wish you all the best with it. For the rest of you, who just need a way out of this financial quagmire, carry on reading. In fifteen simple steps, you will have your financial life in your control, and then maybe you can search for a better way. For now, this is your path.

This book also does not have any expert advice; instead, it has a lot of practical advice. But I have a feeling that if you were looking for expert financial advice, you would have picked up one of the many fat books with graphs and charts and numbers that populate the ‘Finance’ section of most bookshops and online book vendors. I have read many of them and understood a few (okay, only a very few). None of these fat titles made any difference in how I handled my money, and I think that is a statement that’s going to be true for most people who dared to read similar tomes. So, if you are looking for advice about how to pick the next big stock which will double your money in a month, you won’t find it here.

But what you will find in this book is a step-by-step guide about how to get all your financial ducks in line, save for your future while living a good life right now, and invest in a systematic and reliable manner. Or, in other words, a guide to adulting in the modern world.

Okay, with all the disclaimers out of the way, we can truly begin now. So, let’s go and unfuck your life!

_______

1https://scripbox.com/blog/indians-and-saving-scripbox-survey-for-world-savings-day/

MILESTONE 1

THE BIG BAD B: BUDGETING FOR REAL LIFE

There is no way to either hide it or skirt around it. So, I am just going to come out and say it: Budget. There. Now that we got the hard part done, let us keep an open mind and listen.

Whether you know it or not, you do have a budget. It’s just that this budget of yours is made by external situations and factors, and not by you. How, you might ask. Well, tell me, can you imagine a world where at the end of each month your employer simply gives you a random amount of money—whatever they feel is appropriate for that month—as your salary? You could make anywhere between ₹5,000/- a month if your employer didn’t have a good day, to ₹20,000/- if their mood happened to be just right. You wouldn’t agree to work under such circumstances and subject yourself to such capricious magnanimity, would you? And who are we kidding, your employer would always pay you the least amount that they can get away with, good mood be damned.

But this is exactly what we do on the expenses side of the money equation. So, you’ve had a bad day at work, let us throw a couple of thousands on getting some retail therapy. Stressed out? A spa day is mandatory. You have some good news? Oh, the first round is on me!

But who is the boss of your money here? You may think it is you, after all, it is your mood that is dictating everything. But then how is it that it’s the malls and the spas and the bars that are making all the profit while you are left scrambling for money at the end of each month? How come you are the one who is always left with too much month and not enough money?

The first step to solving any problem is to recognise its existence. When your hard-earned money starts lining the pockets of corporations and multinationals alone, you are nothing but a modern slave. You think you are liberated—rethink. All your working life, every single second of it, is being spent in providing profits to these giants. You might protest here and say that you are one of the responsible ones because your money doesn’t go towards entertainment or excessive consumerism but into EMIs on your car and your house. Sorry, but you are a slave too. You are simply providing interest to the banks instead of ensuring profits for the corporations. Basically, tomaato-tomaahto.

So, to break free of this slavery, will you have to stop ordering in every week? Will you have to give up on ever owning a car? Or will you have to just stop being young and alive in general? No. Thank heavens, no.

But the way you know how much you earn, right down to the last paisa that comes after that decimal point, or how much of that salary is your basic pay and how much is some allowance or the other, or when your increment is due, and what bonus you can reasonably expect, etc., I ask that you start getting to know the other side of the monetary equation too. And then modify that equation till it is your slave, and not the other way round. In other words, have a budget and stick to it.

But, but, but, since I think that is too tedious a task for most of us (including myself), I promise you I won’t make you track every single expense you incur or make a budget every month or even every year. I will give you a shortcut instead.

Even this is easier said than done, I will admit to that, but my checklist will give you small, attainable steps. Just focus on one step at a time and trust me, you will reach there, the magical land where you control your money instead of your money controlling you.

THE BABY STEPS

1. Make a financial diary

Yes, it is old-fashioned. Yes, there are apps and spreadsheets and digital assistants. But the thing is, mobiles are no longer long-term assets. We change them almost every year, or if we are the frugal kind then every two years. The written word has, ironically, become the only permanent way to store information. And financial information is permanent.

So, make it a fun activity. Get one of those fancy notebooks which is going to make you want to write, because we are going to use it quite often through the course of this book.

2. The 30-day challenge

Before you put this book down, tired as you are of everyone telling you to track your spending, hear me out. I promise that you will only have to do it for a month. No budgeting and no tracking after that. Really.

All right. Now that I have (somewhat) convinced you, let us proceed.

Like I said at the beginning of this chapter, you do have a budget that has been set for you by external situations and factors. Whether it is your friends, your family, your mood, or the big end-of-season sale at the mall, they are the real masters of your money, and you are only slaving away, day after day, month after month, to fulfil their desires.

Do you want proof? Fine. For one month, and one month only, keep a track of the money going out of your pocket in your spanking new financial diary. Do not judge yourself during this month. Do not filter what you write in that diary. Do not restrain yourself in any manner. Go about all your activities as you would normally. Only this time, write it all down. It does not need to be very elaborate or detailed. Just mentioning the category label and the amount will do. For instance, ‘Food: 500’, ‘Cab: 200’, and ‘Car EMI: 13,000’.

Maintain this habit strictly for a month and do it once a day, preferably at night, when you can simply relive your day and note down each expense. It will not take you more than a couple of minutes.

A last word of caution here: do not read back over the entries. Your only focus at this moment is to jot things down. There is no looking back and no looking forward. At least not until these 30 days of you keeping track of just where your money is going are over! Turn over to the next page only AFTER you have completed this 30-day challenge.

Thirty days later . . .

And here we are, a full challenge later, a little wiser perhaps, and a little more aware of how money has been flowing out of our hands every day, every month. But let’s not dwell on all that right now. Let’s get moving and tackle all that comes after the 30-day challenge.

3. Results of the challenge

Now comes the fun part. At the end of the month, make a few meta categories and organise all the entries under the relevant categories. The following are the categories I recommend:

•Housing: This would include things like rent, EMI, property taxes, maintenance costs, and any other costs related only and only to keeping a roof over your head.

•Food: This would include grocery bills and eating-out expenses. Since we usually also shop